Tom Stoppard’s
Arcadia merges science with human concerns and ideals, examining the universe’s influence in our everyday lives and ultimate fates through relationship between past and present, order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge. Set in an English country house in the year 1809-1812 and 1989, the play examines the lives of two modern scholars and the house's current residents with the lives of those who lived there 180 years earlier.

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Racing Demon

By:
David Hare

Narrated by:
Rosie Fellner,
Paul Fox,
Jared Harris,
and others

Length: 2 hrs and 2 mins

Original Recording

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
4

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
3

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
3

Four clergymen seek to make sense of their mission while being torn in all directions by the Church of England. After a critically-lauded debut in 1990 at London’s National Theatre,
Racing Demon went on to earn universal acclaim. More than 20 years later, David Hare’s bold and moving revelations on gay ordination and the doctrine of the priesthood ring more resoundingly than ever.

This final play from the pen of Oscar Wilde is a stylish send-up of Victorian courtship and manners, complete with assumed names, mistaken lovers, and a lost handbag. Jack and Algernon are best friends, both wooing ladies who think their names are Ernest, "that name which inspires absolute confidence." Wilde’s effervescent wit, scathing social satire, and high farce make this one of the most cherished plays in the English language.

You Never Can Tell was originally born out of a bet that Shaw couldn't write a "seaside comedy" (a popular theatrical genre at that time). The result is perhaps the most surprising of Shaw's plays, complete with marital mayhem, tangled romance, and even doubtful dentistry. Despite the play's lighthearted tone, it's really another of Shaw's brilliantly observed social treatises, this time in the guise of a light comedy.

Beware the gossips! Lady Sneerwell and her hireling, Snake, are certainly up to no good in this timeless send-up of hypocritical manners. Thanks to their scandal-mongering, the comely Lady Teazle must fend off the slanderous barbs that have caught the ear of her elderly husband - as well as every other gossip in London! What follows is a torrent of mistaken identities and sex-crazed scheming in which the upper classes have never looked so low class.

In
Table Manners, the action occurs in the dining room of Mother’s house, where a conventional middle-class family is attempting to have a pleasant country weekend. But they are no match for Norman, the bane of the family, who horrifies everyone by doing exactly as he likes.

In this classic farce, a young man pretends to be a war hero to impress a pretty girl. As his lies progress, so do his troubles - with hilarious results. Playwright Pierre Corneille’s comedy of manners is considered a groundbreaking work that influenced contemporaries such as the young Molière. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production, starring Tara Lynne Barr, Janine Barris, Sue Cremin, Danny Mann, Christopher Neame, John Sloan, Mark Sullivan, and Matthew Wolf Includes a conversation about Corneille and French drama with Larry F. Norman of the University of Chicago.

The third “battle” of Ayckbourn’s celebrated trilogy The Norman Conquests, returns us to the same weekend in the country, but this time to the setting of Mother’s overgrown English country garden. Something more troublesome than brambles is lurking among the roses. Havoc ensues among the flora and fauna, as this cynical masterpiece makes its way to a hilarious conclusion.

In the second “battle” of Ayckbourn’s celebrated triology The Norman Conquests, we rejoin the family weekend, this time hearing the events in the living room, where Norman gets drunk on homemade dandelion wine – and all hell breaks loose. Norman unleashes his merry brand of manipulative charm on the hapless guests and even his most formidable opponents go down in defeat on the drawing room rug.

In 17th-century Sicily, a clever valet named Mascarille tries to help his boss, Lélie, win the girl of his dreams – only to find that Lélie is a monumental dunce who ruins every one of his intricate schemes. Undaunted, Mascarille invents progressively wilder plots, only to see his best-laid plans go very awry in Molière’s
The Bungler, translated by Richard Wilbur.

Molière wrote some of the most durable and penetrating comedies of all time.
The Imaginary Cuckold and
The School for Husbands are two of his grand farces of marriage and misunderstanding, one set in Paris and the other in the provinces. Translated by Richard Wilbur.